Month: November 2020

The Italian archbishop best known for confronting Pope Francis over the Vatican’s willful blindness to priests who abuse boys has written a letter in which he lashes out at the “global elite”, prompting some to accuse him of sympathizing with the “QAnon” movement of conspiracy theorists.

The letter, penned by Archibishop Carlo Maria Vigano, formerly the Vatican’s ambassador to the US, attacks a shadowy “global elite”, that is plotting a “Great Reset” intended to undermine “God and humanity”.

This same group, the archbishop argued, is also responsible for the lockdowns that have restricted movement and freedom around the globe, eliciting protests in many European capitals.

“The fate of the whole world is being threatened by a global conspiracy against God and humanity,” Viganò wrote in the letter, which comes just days before the US election, which the archbishop wrote was of “epochal importance.”

“No one, up until last February,” Viganò writes, “would ever have thought that, in all of our cities, citizens would be arrested simply for wanting to walk down the street, to breathe, to want to keep their business open, to want to go to church on Sunday. Yet now it is happening all over the world, even in picture-postcard Italy that many Americans consider to be a small enchanted country, with its ancient monuments, its churches, its charming cities, its characteristic villages.” Viganò adds: “And while the politicians are barricaded inside their palaces promulgating decrees like Persian satraps, businesses are failing, shops are closing, and people are prevented from living, traveling, working, and praying.”

Working to protect the world from this group of elites seeking to recast society in a secular, totalitarian model, Viganò portrays President Trump as “the final garrison against the world dictatorship”. Viganò cast Trump’s opponent, Vice President Joe Biden, as “a person who is manipulated by the deep state.”

Analysts who monitor “QAnon” conspiracy theories and their spread online warned the mainstream press that the letter had been widely discussed on various QAnon message boards, and had been disseminated in languages including Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Italian, according to Yahoo News.

Over the summer, Trump tweeted an earlier letter penned by the archbishop, and encouraged his supporters to read it.

So honored by Archbishop Viganò’s incredible letter to me. I hope everyone, religious or not, reads it! https://t.co/fVhkCz89g5

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 10, 2020

In the past, Viagnò has accused Pope Francis of sweeping the child abuse crisis under the rug, and moving to protect homosexual priests, part of a “homosexual current” flowing through the Vatican.

Read the full letter below:

* * *

DONALD J. TRUMP

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Solemnity of Christ the King

Mr. President,

Allow me to address you at this hour in which the fate of the whole world is being threatened by a global conspiracy against God and humanity. I write to you as an Archbishop, as a Successor of the Apostles, as the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America. I am writing to you in the midst of the silence of both civil and religious authorities. May you accept these words of mine as the “voice of one crying out in the desert” (Jn 1:23).

As I said when I wrote my letter to you in June, this historical moment sees the forces of Evil aligned in a battle without quarter against the forces of Good; forces of Evil that appear powerful and organized as they oppose the children of Light, who are disoriented and disorganized, abandoned by their temporal and spiritual leaders.

Daily we sense the attacks multiplying of those who want to destroy the very basis of society: the natural family, respect for human life, love of country, freedom of education and business. We see heads of nations and religious leaders pandering to this suicide of Western culture and its Christian soul, while the fundamental rights of citizens and believers are denied in the name of a health emergency that is revealing itself more and more fully as instrumental to the establishment of an inhuman faceless tyranny.

A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.

The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.

Mr. President, I imagine that you are already aware that in some countries the Great Reset will be activated between the end of this year and the first trimester of 2021. For this purpose, further lockdowns are planned, which will be officially justified by a supposed second and third wave of the pandemic. You are well aware of the means that have been deployed to sow panic and legitimize draconian limitations on individual liberties, artfully provoking a world-wide economic crisis. In the intentions of its architects, this crisis will serve to make the recourse of nations to the Great Reset irreversible, thereby giving the final blow to a world whose existence and very memory they want to completely cancel. But this world, Mr. President, includes people, affections, institutions, faith, culture, traditions, and ideals: people and values that do not act like automatons, who do not obey like machines, because they are endowed with a soul and a heart, because they are tied together by a spiritual bond that draws its strength from above, from that God that our adversaries want to challenge, just as Lucifer did at the beginning of time with his “non serviam.”

Many people – as we well know – are annoyed by this reference to the clash between Good and Evil and the use of “apocalyptic” overtones, which according to them exasperates spirits and sharpens divisions. It is not surprising that the enemy is angered at being discovered just when he believes he has reached the citadel he seeks to conquer undisturbed. What is surprising, however, is that there is no one to sound the alarm. The reaction of the deep state to those who denounce its plan is broken and incoherent, but understandable. Just when the complicity of the mainstream media had succeeded in making the transition to the New World Order almost painless and unnoticed, all sorts of deceptions, scandals and crimes are coming to light.

Until a few months ago, it was easy to smear as “conspiracy theorists” those who denounced these terrible plans, which we now see being carried out down to the smallest detail. No one, up until last February, would ever have thought that, in all of our cities, citizens would be arrested simply for wanting to walk down the street, to breathe, to want to keep their business open, to want to go to church on Sunday. Yet now it is happening all over the world, even in picture-postcard Italy that many Americans consider to be a small enchanted country, with its ancient monuments, its churches, its charming cities, its characteristic villages. And while the politicians are barricaded inside their palaces promulgating decrees like Persian satraps, businesses are failing, shops are closing, and people are prevented from living, traveling, working, and praying. The disastrous psychological consequences of this operation are already being seen, beginning with the suicides of desperate entrepreneurs and of our children, segregated from friends and classmates, told to follow their classes while sitting at home alone in front of a computer.

In Sacred Scripture, Saint Paul speaks to us of “the one who opposes” the manifestation of the mystery of iniquity, the kathèkon (2 Thess 2:6-7). In the religious sphere, this obstacle to evil is the Church, and in particular the papacy; in the political sphere, it is those who impede the establishment of the New World Order.

As is now clear, the one who occupies the Chair of Peter has betrayed his role from the very beginning in order to defend and promote the globalist ideology, supporting the agenda of the deep church, who chose him from its ranks.

Mr. President, you have clearly stated that you want to defend the nation – One Nation under God, fundamental liberties, and non-negotiable values that are denied and fought against today. It is you, dear President, who are “the one who opposes” the deep state, the final assault of the children of darkness.

For this reason, it is necessary that all people of good will be persuaded of the epochal importance of the imminent election: not so much for the sake of this or that political program, but because of the general inspiration of your action that best embodies – in this particular historical context – that world, our world, which they want to cancel by means of the lockdown. Your adversary is also our adversary: it is the Enemy of the human race, He who is “a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44).

Around you are gathered with faith and courage those who consider you the final garrison against the world dictatorship. The alternative is to vote for a person who is manipulated by the deep state, gravely compromised by scandals and corruption, who will do to the United States what Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing to the Church, Prime Minister Conte to Italy, President Macron to France, Prime Minster Sanchez to Spain, and so on. The blackmailable nature of Joe Biden – just like that of the prelates of the Vatican’s “magic circle” – will expose him to be used unscrupulously, allowing illegitimate powers to interfere in both domestic politics as well as international balances. It is obvious that those who manipulate him already have someone worse than him ready, with whom they will replace him as soon as the opportunity arises.

And yet, in the midst of this bleak picture, this apparently unstoppable advance of the “Invisible Enemy,” an element of hope emerges. The adversary does not know how to love, and it does not understand that it is not enough to assure a universal income or to cancel mortgages in order to subjugate the masses and convince them to be branded like cattle. This people, which for too long has endured the abuses of a hateful and tyrannical power, is rediscovering that it has a soul; it is understanding that it is not willing to exchange its freedom for the homogenization and cancellation of its identity; it is beginning to understand the value of familial and social ties, of the bonds of faith and culture that unite honest people. This Great Reset is destined to fail because those who planned it do not understand that there are still people ready to take to the streets to defend their rights, to protect their loved ones, to give a future to their children and grandchildren. The leveling inhumanity of the globalist project will shatter miserably in the face of the firm and courageous opposition of the children of Light. The enemy has Satan on its side, He who only knows how to hate. But on our side, we have the Lord Almighty, the God of armies arrayed for battle, and the Most Holy Virgin, who will crush the head of the ancient Serpent. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31).

Mr. President, you are well aware that, in this crucial hour, the United States of America is considered the defending wall against which the war declared by the advocates of globalism has been unleashed. Place your trust in the Lord, strengthened by the words of the Apostle Paul: “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). To be an instrument of Divine Providence is a great responsibility, for which you will certainly receive all the graces of state that you need, since they are being fervently implored for you by the many people who support you with their prayers.

With this heavenly hope and the assurance of my prayer for you, for the First Lady, and for your collaborators, with all my heart I send you my blessing.

God bless the United States of America!

+ Carlo Maria Viganò

Tit. Archbishop of Ulpiana

Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America

Authored by Mark Hemingway via RealClearInvestigations.com,

As riots and looting consumed Philadelphia the previous week after a fatal police shooting, a radical left-wing group, the “Philly Socialists,” began monitoring police scanners and relaying information to help protesters evade arrest. At one point, the Philly Socialists tweeted out a clue as to their street allegiances:  “Do humanity a favor and learn what antifa stands for.” 

The scene in Philadelphia was similar to scores of violent protests around the country since May, which have often featured a common and shadowy element – black-masked men and women who seemed as intent on breaking windows and confronting the police as chanting social justice slogans.

Former activist: “For most people antifa is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wearing a black mask.” But its mixture of left-wing politics and anarchist nihilism can be traced back more than 100 years. Antifa/Wikipedia

The one thing most people can agree on is these people have a name – “antifa,” short for anti-fascists. But larger questions – who are they? where did they come from? what do they want? – have been lost in the battle of partisan politics.

President Trump has denounced antifa as an organized terror group, like the Ku Klux Klan. At the first presidential debate, Joe Biden disagreed, paraphrasing Trump’s own FBI director, Christopher Wray, as saying that “unlike white supremacists, antifa is an idea, not an organization, not a militia.”

While Wray did testify to that effect before a House panel in September, he also said antifa was a real threat and that the FBI had undertaken “any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists.” A U.S. attorney with the Justice Department told Congress in August the FBI had opened more than 300 domestic terrorism investigations related to the ongoing riots.  

Antifa is, in fact, hard to pin down. It has no known leaders, no address, not even a Twitter account. A number of specific groups involved in street violence embrace the antifa label. Those groups, in turn, are highly secretive and loosely organized.  Stanislav Vysotsky, a former antifa activist and author of “American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism” (2020), concedes that “for most people antifa is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wearing a black mask.”

This elusiveness, which appears to be by design, makes it difficult to define or even identify members of a movement that nevertheless has had an outsized impact on American society.

Yet, the black mask slips. Scholarly research and daily journalism shed light on antifa’s ideology and its long history in the United States. Its mixture of left-wing politics and anarchist nihilism can be traced back more than 100 years. Its modern incarnation, centered in the Pacific Northwest, features 1960s radicals, including former members of the Weather Underground, anti-racist skateboard punks who emerged in the 1980s, and younger radicals. Their racial and ethnic makeup is uncertain, but significant numbers are white. Arrest records and other publicly available information suggest many of those identifying as antifa are itinerant or marginally employed.

Scholars agree with Vysotsky that “antifascism is simultaneously a complex and simple political phenomenon.” It is simple in that it is an oppositional movement – it is defined by its resistance to “fascism.” Unlike leftists, its adherents are not seeking to gain the levers of power to build a utopia. They are skeptical of state power, hence their frequent clashes with the police, and are more intent on confronting those they see as enemies.

John Brown in 1859: The white man who tried to spark a slave revolt at Harper’s Ferry, Va., is a particular hero to antifa.  Martin M. Lawrence – Library of Congress

But antifascism is also complex because fascism itself “is often an extremely murky concept,” writes Mark Bray, a history lecturer at Rutgers, self-described political organizer and author of “The Antifa Handbook.” To clarify what fascism is, antifa sympathizers try to connect the American movement to a series of obscure 20th century left-wing groups that resisted the likes of Hitler, Mussolini and General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.The leftist slogan of that war, “No pasarán” (“They shall not pass”), is often invoked by American adherents. In general, antifa partisans show no embarrassment from associations with leftist totalitarians. Bray notes that an antifa-sympathizing self-defense group called the “Maoist Red Guards” is still active in Austin.

At the same time, antifa activists are intensely hostile to American historical traditions. In Portland, rioters recently smashed windows of the Oregon Historical Society, stealing and damaging a quilt made by black women to celebrate America’s bicentennial. That same night, rioters tore down statues of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt that had stood in Portland for more than a century.

While American antifa adherents explicitly reject the First Amendment and other classically liberal ideas about free speech and assembly, they see as their spiritual ancestors 19th century slavery abolitionists and others who fought slavery and later racism. Bray writes that John Brown, the white man who tried to spark a slave revolt by attacking a federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Va., in 1859, is a particular hero.

More recently, antifa in America have drawn power from punk-rock subcultures and post-1960s left-wing extremism. After white supremacists recruited disaffected youths as “skinheads” and racist “Oi” bands began to appear, counter-movements formed in response. In particular,  a group of punk rockers known as the Minnesota Baldies in 1987 formed the Anti-Racist Action Network (ARA) to engage in “direct action” confrontations using spray paint, crowbars, and bricks against racists in the punk scene. Word of the group and its exploits, which sometimes involved violent skirmishes with racists, spread via underground punk publications known as “zines” and the organization spread across the country.

ARA’s anarchist and hard-left sympathies became more overt in 2013 when it was reformed as the Torch Network, sometimes known more explicitly as the Torch Antifa Network. The Torch Network today is the closest thing to an antifa organization. According to Torch’s website, affiliated groups are “autonomous organizing bodies …  they may call themselves whatever they want, and can organize the best way they see fit.” The groups that sign on to Torch do, however, agree to support the organization’s five “Points of Unity”: 

1. We disrupt fascist and far right organizing and activity.

2. We don’t rely on the cops or courts to do our work for us.This doesn’t mean we never go to court, but the cops uphold white supremacy and the status quo. They attack us and everyone who resists oppression. We must rely on ourselves to protect ourselves and stop the fascists.

3. We oppose all forms of oppression and exploitation. We intend to do the hard work necessary to build a broad, strong movement of oppressed people centered on the working class against racism, sexism, nativism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination against the disabled, the oldest, the youngest, and the most oppressed people. We support abortion rights and reproductive freedom. We want a classless, free society. We intend to win!

4. We hold ourselves accountable personally and collectively to live up to our ideals and values.

5. We not only support each other within the network, but we also support people outside the network who we believe have similar aims or principles. An attack on one is an attack on all.

The Torch Antifa Network today is the closest thing to an antifa organization. Torch Antifa Network/Wikipedia

Ties to Terror

Beyond what is posted on the Torch Network’s website, not much is known about the organization and what, if any, material support it supplies to affiliates. Some insight came from written testimony supplied to the Senate Judiciary Committee in August by Kyle Shideler, director and senior analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy. Shideler described Torch Antifa as “one of the largest regional networks of Antifa in the United States,” and identified a man named Michael Novick, ”the web registrar of the Torch Antifa website,” as a key figure in the movement.

Kyle Shideler, analyst: Ex-Weather Underground member Michael Novick “establishes the historic relationship between the communist guerrilla and terrorist movements of the 1970s and Antifa of today.” Center for Security Policy

Novick “establishes the historic relationship between the communist guerrilla and terrorist movements of the 1970s and Antifa of today,” Shideler reported. “Novick is former member of the Weather Underground terrorist group. He is a founding member of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and a founding member of Anti-Racist Action-Los Angeles.”  

The business address associated with the national Anti-Racist Action organization is Novick’s home in Los Angeles. Attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.

He appears to have kept up with his former domestic terrorist associates somewhat – he spoke at an ARA conference in 2011 alongside more notorious Weather Underground members Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, controversial associates of Barack Obama in his Chicago political rise. Novick’s affiliation with the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, founded by Weather Underground members in 1978 and active into the 1990s, is also notable because of that organization’s ties to violence. While the John Brown group did confront Klan groups and work for various anti-racist causes, it also fought for a much broader spectrum of radical causes ranging from Puerto Rican independence to defending leftist governments in Central America at the height of the Cold War.

Three members of the John Brown group were convicted for their roles in a string of bombings in Washington and New York between 1982 and 1985 — including an explosion in the U.S. Capitol building in 1983, along with explosions at three military installations in the D.C. area, and four more bombings in New York City. Two of the three served long prison terms, but on his last day in office, President Clinton commuted the 40-year sentence of the third, Linda Evans, after 13 years. Evans had also been involved with both the Weather Underground, as well as the John Brown group.

Susan Rosenberg’s wanted poster. Now tied to BLM, she got her sentence commuted by Bill Clinton.  Wikimedia

Such cross-connections between groups appear to be characteristic of groups of that time, and of antifa’s loose organization today. In the book, “Extremist Groups in America,” published in 1990, author Susan Lang reported that the John Brown group “is thought to be a front for the May 19th Communist Organization.” That organization, which took its name from the shared birthday of Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X, also had strong ties to the Weather Underground and was linked to the bombings. Its most notable figure today is Susan Rosenberg, 65, who went to prison on weapons and explosives charges and for her role in helping Assata Shakur (formerly JoAnne Chesimard) escape to Cuba after her conviction as an accomplice to the murder of a New Jersey state trooper. Rosenberg’s 58-year sentence was also commuted by President Clinton.

Rosenberg today has a prominent tie to Black Lives Matter, not antifa. She is vice chair of Thousand Island Currents, the fiscal sponsor of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which received millions in corporate donations after George Floyd’s death while in custody of the Minneapolis police. The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation itself was founded by self-described “trained Marxists” who established a relationship with Venezuela’s radical left-wing government.

Foreign actors may play a role enabling antifa’s domestic violence, Shideler says. “In 2019 Novick travelled to Cuba as part of the 50th Venceremos Brigade, showing the substantial continuity of these movements,” he notes in his Senate testimony. Rosenberg has also been a participant in the Cuban Venceremos Brigades, founded by leftist radicals in 1969 to forge ties with communist Cuba. It has often served as recruitment program for Cuban intelligence and fomented radicalism within the U.S.

Anarchy in the U.S.A.

While antifa can be placed in the tradition of left-wing extremist violence, is also influenced by anarchic political movements. Antifa’s imagery is red and black – red representing communist and syndicalist sympathies, while black symbolizes a commitment to anarchy. Loosely speaking, anarchists seek to dissolve governments and abolish all use of forced compliance, reorganizing society according to principles of mutual cooperation.

Portland, 2020: Anarchic antifa is prevalent in the Pacific Northwest because the area has strong historical ties to anarchists. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Anarchy also helps explain why antifa is so prevalent in Portland and the Pacific Northwest generally. The area has strong historical ties to anarchists. An anarchist community in Washington state around the turn of the 20th century briefly gained infamy after President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist. More recently, anarchist philosophy was foundational to the eco-terrorist movement that’s been active in Oregon since the 1970s. 

According to Portland State University history professor Marc Rodriguez, contemporary antifa grew out of the 1999 riots at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, when a subset of black-masked protesters used the cover of a larger protest to engage in violent destruction. Though the antifa label was not in wide use – the first American group calling itself antifa would emerge in Boston in 2002 – the anarchist influence was well-understood at the time.

There is little doubt that over several decades an anarchist “scene” in the Pacific Northwest has been fertile ground for left-wing radicalism, and that helps explain why Portland and Seattle are the locus of so much antifa activity.  

Antifa groups make most major tactical decisions by democratic vote, while tolerating individual decisions to engage in action presumably consistent with the group ethos. “Militant antifascist practices … are frequently spontaneous, decentralized, and directly democratic,” notes Vysotsky.

There’s also quite a lot of overlap between anarchism and communist ideologies.

“For the most part, you’re looking at an ideology of autonomism, which is bottom-up Marxist organizing rather than a top- down Leninist vanguard organizing. This was an ideology that came out of came out of Italy and Germany in the late60s, early 70s,” Shideler says. “It was influential with the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction, and you still see this in their language. When they talk about autonomous action or setting up an autonomous zone, that’s what they’re referring to.”

From the antifa-friendly website Crimethinc. It published a detailed after-action report where anonymous “participants in the uprising in Minneapolis in response to the murder of George Floyd explore how a combination of different tactics compelled the police to abandon the Third Precinct.” crimethinc.com

A dramatic example of this approach was evident this summer when protestors established an autonomous zone in downtown Seattle after the mayor forced police to abandon a precinct. The lawless zone quickly became a hub for violence and two African American men were slain inside its boundaries.

The lack of formal hierarchy inside antifa affinity groups and their model of “leaderless resistance” may have Marxist and anarchic ideological origins, but this same phantom cell structure makes it similar to how more commonly understood terrorist groups such as al Qaeda commonly operate.

At protests, antifa stalwarts carry weapons and coordinate their actions on the ground in order to evade law enforcement and do maximum damage. “They communicate in large Signal chat rooms, an encrypted peer-to-peer app,” said Andy Ngo, a Portland-based journalist who has been covering antifa for several years. “They also use hand signals, they have walkie-talkie devices, and scouts who watch where the police are and provide real time updates.” Antifa openly and broadly share strategic and tactical intelligence. After a precinct in Minneapolis was overrun in the riots earlier this year, the antifa-friendly website Crimethinc published a detailed after-action report where anonymous “participants in the uprising in Minneapolis in response to the murder of George Floyd explore how a combination of different tactics compelled the police to abandon the Third Precinct.”

Antifa groups may operate and make decisions according to unusual principles, but they are organized and can coordinate quite effectively.

Defining Fascism Down

Antifa’s exceedingly broad definition of fascism (in Portland it includes the Republican Party), combined with left-wing and anarchist ideology that regards basic law enforcement illegitimate, serves to justify some especially radical beliefs. For one, antifa adherents believe their opponents have no right to speech or assembly and must be confronted and shut down wherever they appear.

Quote: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase … ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ ” Amazon.com

“The Antifa Handbook” has an entire chapter offering up a series of defenses for “no platforming” antifa opponents. “Militant antifascism refuses to engage in terms of debate that developed out of the precepts of classical liberalism that undergird both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ positions in the United States,” Bray writes. “Instead of privileging allegedly ‘neutral’ universal rights, anti-fascists prioritize the political project of destroying fascism and protecting the vulnerable regardless of whether their actions are considered violations of the free speech of fascists or not.”

Other rationales for rejecting free speech rest on embracing anarchy: “The false assumption that the United States maximizes free speech rests on the unstated fact that this right only applies to non-incarcerated citizens,” he adds. “In contrast, antiauthoritarians seek to abolish prisons, states, and the very notion of citizenship—thereby eliminating this black hole of rightlessness.”

Bray justifies this position by arguing that broad denial of free speech rights is necessary to prevent latter-day Hitlers from arising. “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase incorrectly ascribed to Voltaire that ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’” he writes. “After Auschwitz and Treblinka, anti-fascists committed themselves to fighting to the death the ability of organized Nazis to say anything.”

As a result of this purported vigilance, Bray observes, the ARA and antifa have been a “victim of their own success” in that the last 20 years have seen a marked decline in once sizable and influential white supremacist organizations. He even quotes a New Jersey antifa member saying, “At a certain point the biggest group was the National Socialist Movement, with just 80 dudes doing reenactments.”

If the numbers of actual fascists are waning, why has antifa violence exploded this year? One answer is that antifa portrays the Trump presidency as a threat.  “No Trump—No KKK—No Fascist USA!” has become “the most popular anti-Trump chant” at protests, Bray writes.

More problematic is the way this anti-Trump sentiment has resulted in attacks on ordinary voters and local political organizations. In 2017, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler canceled an annual parade in the city after “antifascists” threatened violence because the Multnomah County GOP was marching in the parade. “You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely,” read the threat sent to the city.

The larger goal of antifa is an end to negotiated politics where political dissent is met with intimidation and punishment. “Our goal should be that in twenty years those who voted for Trump are too uncomfortable to share that fact in public,” writes Bray. “We may not always be able to change someone’s beliefs, but we sure as hell can make it politically, socially, economically, and sometimes physically costly to articulate them.”

Justifying Violence

Antifa members fetishize and celebrate their violence. “One of the more shocking aspects of militant antifascist culture for observers outside of the movement is the consumption and trade of violent images,” Vysotsky notes. “Pictures of being beaten or bloodied in addition to memes that extol the virtue of antifascist violence or mock injured fascists are a common element of antifa culture.” Such pictures are known as “riot porn.”

In addition to actual violence, threats are another key part of antifa’s toolbox. The group is a proponent of “doxing” – Internet slang for exposing someone’s name and/or personal information in order to shame and intimidate them.

Evidently not antifa’s cup of tea. heroesamericancafe.com

The results of such vigilantism are predictable. After left-wing activists in Portland solicited the names of “non-friendly” businesses that didn’t support the Black Lives Matter movement online, an antifa-affiliated twitter account alleged that Heroes American Café in Portland, which has American flag décor and pictures of various American heroes on the wall, supported local police. The owner of Heroes Café, an African American veteran, soon got a threatening phone call. A few days after that, his windows were smashed and bullets were fired into his restaurant during a protest billed as a “Day of Rage.”

In broader ways, antifa’s embrace of violence makes adherents remarkably similar to the violent racist extremists and alt-right groups they claim to oppose. Both groups use self-justifications for violence that vastly overstate a threat from within broader society. They both rely on tribal identitarian politics to enforce a purity of ideology that is incompatible with the existing cultural and political order that they hope to overthrow.

Antifa’s beliefs regarding violence appear to plainly meet the definition of domestic terrorism in federal law, defined as activities done “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”

Downplaying the Threat

Observers sympathetic to social justice goals express concern that antifa violence is counterproductive. “I think [antifa] also need to understand how difficult they may be making the situation for the promotion of Black Lives Matter in this time where Black people are really trying to make some headway,” Portland State University sociologist and Black studies professor Shirley Jackson told a local television station last month. Public opinion seems to bolster Jackson’s worries that violence at protests is impeding the larger goals of racial justice. Last month, Pew reported support for Black Lives Matter had dropped significantly since June, and the “findings come as confrontations between protesters and police have escalated.”

Despite this, political leadership is often afraid or unwilling to crackdown on antifa. Major police departments across the country have been hamstrung and asked to stand down in the face of ongoing violent riots. Antifa may consider Portland Mayor Wheeler a tyrant, but the city dropped 90% of charges against rioters in September. Despite the city tolerating violent riots, Wheeler is up for reelection in November and is currently tied in the polls with challenger Sarah Iannarone, who has publicly declared, “I am antifa.” In 2016, when Iannarone previously ran for mayor, she tweeted out a photo of a ballot of a constituent who had voted for her but had elsewhere written in Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Che Guevarra, Ho Chi Minh, Angela Davis and other violent Marxists for city offices. Iannarone remarked the ballot was, “Quite possibly my favorite ‘I voted this way’ photo.”

docs.google.com

Far from creating pressure to achieve specific political reforms related to racial injustice or police violence, antifa appears to be using this moment to further press its radical political agenda on a national stage. A group called Shutdown DC has been distributing a 38-page guide called “Stopping the Coup” that offers specific guidance on how to disrupt the national election in November, should it be contested, in order to stop Trump, “who is energized by the forces of white supremacy and brutal capitalism.” The “Stopping the Coup” document disavows violence, but Shutdown DC has not shied away from working closely with affinity groups such as All Out DC, a “collective of DC antifascist activists” who want to “burn down the American plantation” when organizing major protests in the nation’s capital.

In the meantime, two high profile election simulations done by mainstream political groups – the Transition Integrity Project on the left, and the Texas Public Policy Center in conjunction with the Claremont Institute on the right – both found a high likelihood of antifa violence following November’s election. Regardless of whether antifa is most accurately described as broad ideology or a unified movement, the threat it presents to disrupting the democratic elections and enforcing basic law and order is tangible.

Just when you thought nothing interesting was happening at airports anymore…

Two former airport workers are among six people who have been indicted for allegedly stealing more than $6 million worth of designer merchandise, including Gucci purses, jewelry and Chanel handbags, in what is being called a “series of heists” at JFK Airport.

Two truckers that formerly worked at JFK allegedly used inside knowledge of the airport’s innerworkings to plan and coordinate the heists, according to NBC 4 New York. 

One trucker, 33-year-old David Lacarriere, allegedly used a forged document and airway bill at the receiving office for an air cargo importer to gain access to an incoming Prada shipment in January. His accomplice, 43-year-old Gary McArthur, helped him load four pallets of Prada merchandise – worth about $804,000 – onto a tractor trailer. From there, they simply drove off with the goods. 

The tractor trailer was found days later, empty and doused with bleach. 

The crew pulled a similar heist in May, where one person posed as a truck driver and another presented similarly forged documentation. During the May heist, the crew was able to walk away with five pallets of Chanel and Gucci items, worth more than $4.4 million. Similarly, that tractor trailer was also found days later, empty and doused with bleach.

By June, authorities had discovered the crew’s stash house for its stolen goods at an abandoned beauty salon in Queens. While executing a search warrant on the premises, police were able to prevent the sale of $300,000 in stolen merchandise and recover more than 3,000 Gucci items and 1,000 Chanel items collectively worth about $2.5 million.

At the time the search warrant was executed, Lacarriere and McArthur were allegedly in the midst of selling nearly 120 items to 51 year old Alan Vu, who law enforcement observed loading products into his Mercedes SUV.

Four other men were arrested as part of the scheme and police are still pursuing two additional suspects. The men were charged in a 22 count indictment that includes grand larceny, conspiracy and criminal possession of stolen property. Lacarriere and McArthur both face 25 years in prison if convicted. Vu faces up to 15 years. 

Lacarriere’s attorney told ABC: “We’re anxious to see what the evidence is the people allege they have. They said a lot of things, but they haven’t shown us anything yet.”